Spring Concerts
Programs for the PMC’s Spring Concert (held annually in March on the USC campus) vary greatly in their repertoire and format. We have often featured composers from our archival collections, including music by Henryk Wars, Bronisław Kaper, Roman Ryterband and others. We have also presented a concert of young Polish composers living in the U.S., celebrated the Chopin Bicentennial with a marathon concert, and featured such internationally-renowned pianists as Leszek Możdżer (in conjunction with the Sounds from Behind the Iron Curtain conference) and Jonathan Plowright, as well as filmmakers, including David Lynch.
See all ‘Spring Concerts’ here
Other Events
Since before the PMC was established as a Center, we have organized various festivals, conferences and special events dedicated to Polish music, both on and off campus. Some of the highlights of these include: Szymanowski Centennial (1982); Górecki Autumn (1997); Polish/Jewish/Music! International Conference (1998); Polish Manuscript Exhibition and Concert (2000); Polish Independence Day & Henry Vars Gala Celebration (2005); and Concerts at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (ongoing since 2017).
PMC Around the World
In addition to the PMC-organized events listed above and to the right, PMC staff members have also been invited to participate in events and symposia around the world. These include: special sessions on Polish music held at national meetings of scholarly societies since 1996, e.g. American Musicological Society (session on Lutosławski in 1997, with papers by Dr. Maja Harley, Martina Homma, Adrian Thomas; study session on Polish identity in music in 1999, with presenters including Halina Goldberg, Bret Werb, Timothy J. Cooley, and others), Society for American Music (session on Polish immigrants to the U.S. in 1999, with presentations by Linda Schubert and M. Harley), American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (session on music theater in Slavic Europe in 1999; session on Catholicism and composers in 2000; session on the city of Kraków in 2001), the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (session on Chopin reception in 1999; session on Polish immigrants in 2000, session on national composers in 2003).
PMC Director Marek Zebrowski and filmmaker David Lynch performed series of live improvisation “Polish Night Music” concerts during the years 2006-2012 in New York, Gdańsk, Łódź, Paris, Milan, Washington DC and Los Angeles. They also collaborated on a multimedia concert, Measures & Frames, at USC in 2015, which was later repeated in Canada and Poland. As a soloist, Marek Zebrowski has spotlighted the PMC’s “Henryk Wars Collection” by performing the composer’s previously unknown Piano Concerto with Philharmonic orchestras in Łódź, Lublin, Wrocław, and Poznań with Krzesimir Dębski and with the Gorzów Philharmonic Orchestra under Monika Wolinska. As a chamber musician with cellist Lars Hoefs, the Armstrong String Quartet and other assisting artists, Marek Zebrowski presented a series of Polish music concerts in Brazil (2005 and 2010), as well as in various festivals and concert series, including Poland (US Cantors at Kraków Philharmonic, 2009; Muzyka na Szczytach, Zakopane 2012), Ukraine (Lviv & Zhitomyr Philharmonic, 2012), Ceret Festival in France (2012 and 2015), Chicago (2013), Kwadrofonik Festival and Muzyka Odnaleziona at Royal Orangery (Warsaw, 2016), among others.
The PMC’s Archival Collections were highlighted at the International Association of Music Libraries Conference in Rome (2016), Polish Association of Music Libraries in Warsaw (2016), Conference of Polish Museums, Archives and Libraries Abroad in London (2016) and New York (2017), with proceeds published in print and online.